Two Months and Counting: Naming Of Standards Panel Behind Schedule

Two months after the deadline, President Clinton still has not
received a full slate of nominees for a council that will approve
national academic standards.

Congress created the 19-member National Education Standards and
Improvement Council as part of the Goals 2000: Educate America Act. It
will certify voluntary national standards and state standards and
assessments that are submitted for its approval.

The law called for the council to be in place by August. But it
created a cumbersome nominating process in which Congressional leaders,
the Secretary of Education, and the National Education Goals Panel must
submit names to the President.

So far, only the goals panel has met its obligation. In July, it
forwarded 12 names to Mr. Clinton.

Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley is waiting to submit his 21
names after he sees whom the Speaker of the House and the Senate
majority leader recommend, said Michael Cohen, a senior adviser to the
Secretary.

He said Mr. Riley is withholding his nominations to insure that Mr.
Clinton has a balanced slate of candidates from which to choose. "We
don't want to confront the President with a disjointed slate of
nominees from which he can't put together a representative and coherent
panel," Mr. Cohen said.

Once the Congress submits its names, he added, the Secretary is
prepared to act quickly.

But Congress is unlikely to submit its nominees before next week's
elections, according to legislative aides. Even then, the appointments
could be further delayed by background checks.

Meanwhile, the council, known as NESIC, has its work cut out for it.
Proposed national standards in the arts, civics, geography,
mathematics, U.S. history, and social studies have already been
released. And more standards are due soon.

Skills Board Also Lags

A board to set voluntary national skills standards for occupations
is also off to a slow start.

Congress did not set a deadline for appointing the National Skills
Standards Board, which it also created as part of Goals 2000. But Labor
Department officials had hoped to see it up and running by this fall.
Instead, it looks as though the earliest the board will meet is
January.

Senate leaders last month appointed five of their six members to the
28-member board.

Speaker of the House Thomas S. Foley, D-Wash., has received three
recommendations from the House minority leader but is awaiting names
from the House majority leader. Until then, a Congressional aide said,
Mr. Foley cannot make any appointments.

President Clinton may announce his 12 selections within the next few
weeks, said Michaela Meehan, the skills-standards leader for the Labor
Department.

Besides the 24 Presidential and Congressional appointments, four
members serve in a nonvoting capacity: the secretaries of Labor,
Education, and Commerce, and the NESIC chairman.

So far, the Senate majority leader, George J. Mitchell, D-Me., has
appointed E. William Crotty, a lawyer with the Florida firm of Black,
Crotty, & Sims; Katherine Schrier, the administrator of an
education fund for the Association of State and Federal Municipal
Employees in New York City; and Michael P. Riccards, the president of
Shepherd College in Shepherdstown, W.Va.

The Senate minority leader, Bob Dole, R-Kan., has named Bruce
Carswell, the vice president for human resources for the GTE
Corporation of Stamford, Conn., and Stephen L. Sayler, an employment
manager of Winning Ways Inc. in Olathe, Kan. Mr. Dole's final selection
will represent organized labor.

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